Collections of Colonies of Bees

Like a folkier Thurston Moore or Kurt Cobain, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has made point of using his notoriety to shine light on music he feels worthwhile, which is good news for Milwaukee’s Collections of Colonies of Bees, the group that perhaps stands to benefit most from Vernon’s cachet. An instrumental post-rock quartet founded by Chris Rosenau and Jon Mueller the far more volatile trio Pele, the group planning a release with their sometimes tourmate Vernon later this year. With any luck, the resulting exposure should bring more attention to the band’s 2008 four-song suite Birds, which imagines a calmer, more textural counterpart to Explosions the Sky, one that replaces crashing crescendos with fluid harmonies.